Search This Blog

Posts

The invention and widespread adoption of the standardized shipping container is one of the more underrated technological advances of the 20th century, though it's been getting some moreattention in recent years. Containerization dramatically reduced the amount of time cargo ships spent in port and increased the efficiency of the shipping industry.

Research by U.K.-based economists Daniel Bernhofen, Zouheir al-Sali, and Richard Kneller attempts to measure just how dramatic an impact containerization had on driving the boom in global trade of the late 20th century. By way of historical background, they write:

Before the advent of containerization, the technology for unloading general cargo through the process of break-bulk shipping had hardly changed since the Phoenicians traded along the coast of the Mediterranean. The loading and unloading of individual items in barrels, sacks and wooden crates from land transport to ship …